


Nightmares

by blacklilyqueen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Mentions of Child Murder, Mentions of Murder, Nightmares, Other, mentions od suicidal thoughts, winterwidow is only hinted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22162582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacklilyqueen/pseuds/blacklilyqueen
Summary: Bucky had to deal with a lot of nightmares after escaping HYDRA . Flashbacks popping into his mind while he’s asleep. But this particular night is different. It’s not just one flashback or two. No, it’s five of them and something new.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Nightmares

_An empty hotel room in Moscow. A crowd of people cheering in the streets. A metal hand reaching for the sniper rifle. A shot. Lots of screams. One dead body._

Startled, Bucky woke up from his sleep. The images that suddenly popped into his head from time to time weren’t new to him since a long time. They liked to sneak into his mind while he slept. Fragments from his past, buried deep in his subconscious. Images, moments, snippets. It often took several days or even weeks before a connection could be made. But even then, Bucky was usually completely unable to actually remember the situation. The situations always seemed familiar to him, but he usually felt like an observer. It was impossible for him to add new details. Especially the question why he did what he did kept him busy. This time he had no answers to his questions. So, he turned to the side and tried to fall asleep again, hoping to get at least some peace this way.

_A lonely road in Long Island. A car. A motorcycle. A shot. A crash. Two punches. A man falls to the ground. A woman. Lots of cries for her husband. A metal hand wrapped around her neck. Two dead bodies._

Stark. When Bucky woke up this time, he knew exactly what had happened and who he’d murdered. Howard and Maria Stark. He’d seen the surveillance video that showed him murdering the two of them. And yet, it was as if it wasn’t him who murdered them.

He had been having a lot of dreams lately, or rather nightmares, of this sort. This one was worse, though. He had already killed many more people. He had killed far more brutally. But nothing seemed as bad as the Starks’ murders. Maybe because he knew Howard before. Maybe because he saw the tape when he was himself again, well, more than before. Maybe because it was the only time, he ever had to face someone who was suffering from loose and grief because of him.

Bucky knew it was going to be a long night. He sat up and took a sip of the water by his bed, hoping it would calm him down a bit. He lay down again, hoping to rest a while longer.

_A quiet neighbourhood in London. A broken window. Lots of broken glass on the floor. A piece of glass in the woman’s throat. A piece of glass in the man’s chest. A whimper behind the couch. A little girl. A metal hand turning her head to the side. A loud crack. Three dead bodies._

That was new. In all the time since he’d escaped HYDRA, he’d been remembering his victims. Many had showed up again and again, haunting him night after night. Wouldn’t let him rest until he at least found out their names. And there were many. But this family he saw for the first time today. In fact, it was probably the second time, but he couldn’t remember the first time, no matter how hard he tried.

It was the eyes of the little girl that would not let him find peace. How old was she? Four? Five? No more than six years. Why was she still awake, it seemed a dark night? Had she come to her parents because she feared a monster under her bed, only to find the real monster with them? Her eyes were filled with tears and fear. An image that would haunt Bucky for a long time to come.

Unable to lie down again, Bucky swung his legs out of bed and stepped out onto the balcony. The cold, clear air allowed him to relax for a moment. Sometimes he wondered why he didn’t go completely crazy when he remembered such things. Was that a sign that maybe he was a crazy psychopath after all? Or was that the natural reaction of his body to prevent him from going insane?

He did not know. All he knew was that he deeply regretted what he had done. Can psychopaths show remorse?

Instead of continuing to deal with the subject and fearing he might go mad, Bucky tried to clear his head. He sat down on one of the two chairs on the balcony and stared up at the sky. It was a clear night and thousands of stars were twinkling towards him. But for Bucky, they were not stars. They were eyes. Little girl eyes staring fearfully at him.

Unable to withstand their gaze, he went back inside and could do nothing but hope that his nightmares would finally come to an end.

_A normal office complex in Berlin. A destroyed conference room. A cut-open throat. A gunshot wound to the head. A gunshot wound to the chest. A man. Lots of pleading for his life. A metal hand cracking his skull on the table. Four dead bodies._

Bucky woke up again. These four he already knew. He had dreamt about them many times and knew who they were. Roland Haumann, Bernd Kreher, Richard Weiling and Arnold Braun. All of them SHILED agents, who were suspected to be on the trail of HYDRA. So they had to be eliminated.

Bucky had tried to learn as much as he could about them after he had dreamt about them for the first time. After some research he realized that the names mentioned in the newspaper articles were just aliases and not real people. Finding out exactly who they were was much harder, but he succeeded. And as it turned out, two of them had children.

It had been the first time Bucky had realized that his actions were not only changing the lives of the people he had killed. He had often thought about the families of his victims, their children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, but also their friends, colleagues and neighbours. How much had he changed their lives? How much had he destroyed them?

He looked down at his metal hand. He had done so many bad things with it. So much blood was on this hand, which belonged to him and yet was not his. What if it were to do something so horrible again?

_A nice café in Washington. A general. A senator. Two soldiers. Lots of civilians. One lonely backpack. A metal hand that surrounds a detonator. Too many dead bodies._

Bucky had long since given up hope of sleeping peacefully and was awakened by the nightmare. He thought about how many people he had killed. He thought about how their deaths could have been avoided. He thought about how many more bodies followed the ones in the café.

What if he had carried the backpack on his shoulders? What if this had been his last assignment? Could he have saved those other people? Would it have just become someone else’s job? Probably.

One last time he went to bed that night.

_A graveyard in the middle of nowhere. Lots of graves. A human hand putting flowers on the graves. A man who mourns for the dead. A man who wishes none of this had ever happened. A man who wishes their murderer was dead. A metal hand that refuses to grant his wish. No new dead body._

This was the first dream in a long time that was not a memory. But this dream was worse. For it contained all the innocent dead and the one person who should be dead instead.

Bucky looked down at his metal hand. Would he really be able to do that?


End file.
